FreeBSD Mall donates FreeBSD discs to NSRC workshops in Africa

The FreeBSD Mall, a provider of high quality FreeBSD software, documentation, support, and services to the open source community, recently donated FreeBSD CDs and DVDs to the NSRC (Network Startup Resource Center) for UNIX / FreeBSD workshops being held in Malawi and Tanzania.

The NSRC is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading networking knowledge to diverse regions throughout the world. Open source operating systems are excellent instructional tools for NSRC workshops due to their easy and free acquisition and superior security and stability.

FreeBSD Mall has donated FreeBSD CDs and DVDs to NSRC and AfNOG (African Network Operators Group) workshops since as far back as 2000. Over 1300 participants have been instructed in approximately 50 NSRC and AfNOG workshops and tutorials. Discs donated by FreeBSD Mall are distributed to students who complete the workshops, allowing them to take home official copies of the software they were just trained on and continue to use those skills. O’Reilly Media also provides books so that people may continue the education process at home in combination with the software.

During NSRC workshops, students learn about network development and the logic behind it. Students are then “let loose” on hardware and software to experiment and learn hands-on with FreeBSD and UNIX. Beginners learn the ropes by installing the operating systems and learning basic commands and techniques. As students progress to the intermediate and advanced classes, they learn and experience more complex commands and tasks.

The NSRC uses these lab-based workshops to teach through doing; a process which also helps students to ensure that they can execute the skills they’ve learned to teach them to others in their community. With copies of FreeBSD in their hands, graduates of the workshops develop skills in networking and system administration in order to better their local community and find related jobs.

“I want to say a BIG thank you to FreeBSD Media. You may not know this, but through your support, we have now trained over 100 female Unix administrators on FreeBSD in the past three years. This is by no means a small number, when you look around your IT department and realize that there are very few women working in the tech industry.” – Dorcas Muthoni, General Manager, OpenWorld Ltd. and NSRC/AfNOG Workshop Organizer